Shadow Realms
by sydneysages
Summary: Life's settled in Morganville: the Glass House Gang are getting on with their lives, Myrnin's making plans to blow up buildings and use the remains for science, and Amelie's keeping a semblance of law and order. But when Myrnin makes a discovery about Claire, it's down to him to keep her safe from things she never previously considered a threat. CHAPTER ONE IS A PROLOGUE
1. Prologue

Hello! So I haven't started a new multichap for a while, and this idea sprang to mind: I just had to write it!

It's canon up to the end of Black Dawn, and from then on it's AU (though some elements of canon post BD may come into play).

The story will **not** focus on romance. If it's involved, it'll be a sub-sub-plot. There are many more interesting things to discuss!

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There was little light on the dark December morning: a strange fog hung in the air obscuring the stars from sight, and this part of Morganville had no man-made lighting. Graveyards were not places for fanfare, and anyway, this was a vampire town. If there was no place for the _special_ residents to act like stereotypical vampires, there would be…silent rebellion; it had almost happened once, after all.

A certain coolness clung to the air following the brief rainstorm, yet it did not bother the one visitor within Morganville's graveyard. Raindrops had fallen upon her skin and, due to the moisture being warmer than the surface upon which it landed, had begun to freeze, crystallising into strange patterns. There was no logic to the rain: it landed where it landed, froze where it landed, and thus the shapes formed were nothing more than an accident—nothing more than God's design.

Something which, to Amelie, was extremely important.

How long she had been there was a mystery even to Amelie. Her eyes had been fixed upon the marble tombstone for the course of her visit, and not even the weather had forced her to leave. She sat facing a rather under-visited grave with her legs folded to the side, one hand pressed into the ground with the other resting within her lap; she had no reason to move when the person she was engaged in conversation was not moving, no?

Only the night before did Amelie realise she had not visited Samuel's—Sam's—grave for over three months. At first she had stopped visiting to try and wean herself off the red-haired man with the lopsided smile he sometimes straightened for her. It hadn't worked, but at least she got the majority of her paperwork done rather than staring at a tombstone praying for the person underneath to return to her.

Before long, the drama and trouble which seemed to encircle her had returned to the forefront of her life: Oliver had attempted to take her town _again_; her father had escaped just to be defeated by none other than her coward friend; their most dangerous enemy had struck at their lives once again, just to be eternally defeated. Her life had almost been lost several times, and only as she lay on the couch in her former home did Amelie realise that she had almost forgotten about Sam.

Well, that was a little strong. She couldn't exactly forget about someone who was always pressing on her mind: she had just prioritised and managed to force him to the back of her rather cavernous brain. Yet as she had lay dying, Amelie regretted not paying her respects more frequently—she vowed that at the very first opportunity she would come to the graveyard and not leave until she had paid her rather-large debt of remembrance.

As she sat, Amelie had thought through every possible way of bringing the dead back to life. She had gone through every single page of her father's book, only to discover she had never memorised the necromancy 'spells'—and she very much doubted Myrnin would have left them in the original book for her to find. It was doubtful they would have worked anyway: she had never been able to work much of the magic her father had wrought. It was most likely a good thing—it proved she was not filled with darkness—but it was what prevented her Sam being returned to her.

Whilst she had set Myrnin the task of finding a way to return her love, the continually elapsing time suggested he was very unlikely to find a solution. It was probably a good thing, she understood, for the world had changed since Sam Glass had lived, and he most likely would not appreciate the changes she had undergone. Yet if there was even a possibility of him returning, she would take it. No matter what the cost was, she would pay it without a second thought.

"My lady?" A voice broke through Amelie's mental discussion, and for the first time in many hours she broke eye contact with Sam's name.

It was Oliver, unsurprisingly. A cursory glance over his face suggested he was concerned for her; his outstretched hand only added to that interpretation.

"Did you forget my orders, Oliver, that I am not to be disturbed when I leave without my guards?" Amelie asked, accepting his hand to rise gracefully to her feet. Oliver towered over her, yet she was aware that power was more than just physical strength: it was within her, and she exuded a great deal more than her former nemesis.

"I did not forget, Amelie. I merely came to inform you that sunrise is merely ten minutes away, and you have an appointment with the Danvers girl at eight o'clock—you do not want to be late."

"Do not attempt to presume what I do or do not want," Amelie snapped, anger flashing where previously there was nought but emptiness and melancholy. It soon faded, and part of her regretted the outburst. "Though…thank you for informing me of the time. I had neglected to take a watch with me on my visit."

As they began to walk towards the gates of the graveyard, Amelie's periphery catalogued Oliver's facial expression. It had always been clear to her that he had resented Sam—even when they were no closer than two allies against her father, he had disliked that another man could reach her where he could not. Sam's death had done nothing to ease that resentment: if anything, it seemed to Amelie as though it had intensified it.

Part of her felt a little guilt that she continued to allow the past to control her thoughts and actions, yet the majority of her did not. Oliver was aware of her connections when he attempted to court her, and she did not need to make it clear that he would never compare to Samuel Glass.

"Ah, just before I left, Myrnin came to your office with a message, one I did not understand." Oliver spoke suddenly, jerking Amelie out of yet another thought montage focusing upon Sam. "I thought it nonsense, yet I promised I would pass on the message, and I will not have that dog thinking he can get the better of me."

"Yes, Oliver, I understand that you are quite honourable and keep your word—the message?" Amelie had to resist rolling her eyes: the day Oliver and Myrnin agreed on something would be the day she died, she feared.

"He said to inform you that it is a code one on the brown monkey scale, and that if you do not give him thirteen green elephants within an hour of receiving this…_turnkey_, the mozzarella-laden turnips will turn to ash." Oliver's nose wrinkled as he finished the message, evidently expecting Amelie to find the message amusing.

Amusing was something she did _not_ find the message, however—it was far from how she felt: elated, intrigued and a tad worried.

For this very specific message was the code Amelie had given Myrnin to pass on if he was ever even part of the way towards discovering a way to bring Samuel Glass back to life.

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If you favourite, please review! I've been atrocious at review replies over the past few months, but I'm finally getting some more time so I'll try and reply!


	2. Discovery

The sound of something heavy smashing upon the concrete floor welcomed Claire to Myrnin's lab on a Monday afternoon. Despite loud noises being the order of the day in this dark underground location, it still made Claire wince; who knew just how expensive the piece of equipment broken had been.

Almost hesitant to discover what priceless technology she had now lost, Claire finished the descent into the laboratory, making her way towards where she thought the smash had originated from. As she walked, she noticed the place was messier than normal: true, she hadn't cleaned it recently—she had taken a week's holiday, blocking Myrnin's number for the duration of the break so he couldn't tempt her to return earlier—but even _Myrnin_ didn't usually decorate work surfaces with blood. He deemed it a waste—though for different reasons than Claire would argue—and only rarely spilled his blood.

She supposed that when one was almost a thousand years old, one figured out how to swallow blood without leaving a mess.

"Myrnin?" Claire called, trying to hide her hesitation. Normally, Myrnin bounded up to the steps immediately upon her arrival, the likeness to an overexcited puppy astounding. After a holiday, he considered it necessary to reintroduce her to the way of the lab, as though a week free from spider excrement and the possibility of a spillage of a poisonous chemical meant she had forgotten 'Correct Laboratory Etiquette'.

She called his name again, unable to stop herself being worried at the lack of response; she was just as worried that she hadn't yet discovered the machine Myrnin had broken. Whilst not in the best of shape, everything she had passed so far appeared, with a cursory glance, to be working; nothing was glaringly obviously broken. Which was good, since Amelie had instructed half of these machines were to be returned to the labs at Columbia University, where Claire had arranged to rent them from: apparently, Amelie didn't view ten million dollars as 'pocket change', unlike Myrnin.

"If you don't reply in the next ten seconds, I'm ringing Amelie and telling her you're being a petulant child again," Claire threatened, shouting a little bit louder this time.

By this point, she had been around almost the entire lab, with just the library and Myrnin's bedroom to go, and there was still no sign of anything strange. Well, strange was a relative term: there was nothing strange for _Myrnin_, anyway.

Finally, the curly-haired alchemist appeared, his head popping around the corner to the library. The downward curve of his lips and the intense gaze of his eyes suggested that he was irritated; the lack of insatiable exultation in his movements was further indication.

"I am _busy_, Claire," he half-snapped, wiping his hands on one of the many rags lying around this 'odds and ends' section of the lab.

Rolling her eyes, Claire took a step forwards. "Why are you using oil in the library? Even _you_ have some appreciation for first editions—normally, at least."

Myrnin scowled, an expression in which he mimicked Amelie almost perfectly. "I'm not doing anything of the sort. Whilst I'm finishing this up, tidy up the place. It looks like a sledgehammer was taken to the place since you were last here."

Before she could say a word in protest, he had disappeared back around the corner, and Claire wasn't willing to invade his privacy. Irritated vampire plus invaded privacy usually ended badly, particularly in this place, where the irritated vampire was also mentally unstable. That didn't mean she was going to clean up, though: despite what Myrnin thought, she wasn't here to clear away his mess.

More than that, she wasn't going anywhere near the blood he had left on the side.

Instead, Claire headed across to the work surface which, formerly, was a form of kitchenette for the laboratory. In recent months following attempts by Myrnin to purchase equipment to install in the alcove, Claire had removed any remnants of its former purpose, instead making it her base for theoretical planning. Myrnin was not to set foot in this part of the laboratory, something which had caused many grumblings from the man: everything here was _her_ ideas, everything she wanted to pursue in the future.

Even though she had committed the ideas to memory, Claire still took another glance over them as she readjusted herself to be suited to the laboratory. She loved this place, truly she did, but a week away reminded her of just how different it was to anything else she experienced in both Morganville and beyond. There was no comparison to the genius which occurred in this place—but there was no equivalent mess or danger. The mess constituted more of a danger than the fact her teacher was a vampire: most bottles were mislabelled, something she had been gradually fixing, and more than once she had found mixtures of compounds in beakers. Half-finished experiments were everywhere, because Myrnin said he would return to them though never did, and during her last spring clean, Claire had discovered a nest of rats had eaten through the safety coatings on the wires. Only with great difficulty had she persuaded Myrnin to vacate the laboratory for a day, so that the appropriate technicians could enter to make sure neither of them was fried to a crisp on any given occasion.

A noise behind Claire made her jump, and she turned to discover Myrnin standing directly behind her, not more than two metres away. He remained covered in oil—just _what_ he was doing in the library with oil she was itching to know—but his expression had changed to be much more…normal.

Or, as normal as Myrnin could ever be.

"Are you _trying_ to win the 'I'm the craziest scientist in the world' award at the upcoming 'worrying bosses' event, or does it just come naturally to you?" Claire asked, turning so she was properly facing Myrnin.

He smiled ever so slightly, reaching out to pick up something from the chair—_her jacket_!

"I don't try at anything, dear Claire: I am already extraordinary."

She shook her head in disbelief. "_You're using my jacket as a rag!_" she hissed, snatching the material out of his hands and throwing it on the floor. She would never wear it again, but it was her favourite—he couldn't defile it further. "And way to go with the developing humility we talked about last month. I'm guessing you've had a war of words with Oliver." She said it as a statement rather than a question, because the likelihood of her being wrong was astronomically small.

Myrnin, for some unfathomable reason, jumped backwards, completing three backward somersaults before returning to the ground. "I had nothing to do, Claire, so of course I had to go and exchange some insults. It simply returned me to top form; my confidence is directly tied to my productivity, and the last week has seen remarkable progress in five different experiments! Five! You haven't brought me such productivity since the time of Bishop."

Claire flinched slightly at the reminder of the worst criminal she had ever had the misfortune to come across—the same man who mentally controlled her for over six months, something broken in part by the man before her, despite him being in the throngs of madness _and_ the latter stages of a disease.

"Usually, scientists don't limit their successes to the aftermath of a major argument; they make breakthroughs _all the time_," Claire commented, her tone withering. It seemed as though he wasn't going to tell her anything about his evidently top-secret library project, and if he wasn't she didn't really have the time for his mind games—or his lack of humility.

"Ah but I am no scientist," Myrnin responded immediately as he picked up a beaker of some dirty brown coloured liquid. Not content to just hold it, he began to throw it up and down, drops of liquid running down the sides of the glass holder, dropping to the floor in an almost perfect circular shape. "Alchemists are not scientists, Claire, how many times must I tell you this?"

"You're perfectly content to call yourself a scientist to get the entirety of Amelie's scientific allowance for the town, aren't you?" Claire countered, standing up and turning around to face Myrnin. She was getting better at reading his face when he lied, and she wanted to see his reaction to something. "Is she behind your secrecy about your library project?"

Myrnin gulped once, focusing his attention on a particular spot upon the ceiling. "Of course she isn't. I can have projects outside of your assistance, Claire; there are some things you just aren't skilled enough to handle."

Rolling her eyes, Claire took three steps forwards, removed the beaker from Myrnin's hand whilst making a mental note to wash her hands as soon as possible, and shook her head. "That's absolute crap, Myrnin, and you know it. Now do I have to ask Amelie to see what's going on, or are you going to be a grown up and just tell me?"

It took almost a minute, but finally, Myrnin looked back at Claire, abandoning his intense gaze upon the ceiling. His face expressed emotions Claire very rarely connected with her boss: confusion and confliction. The frantic way he was biting his lip was making the skin around it grow dark and splotchy in a way only vampires' skin could go; it worried Claire, though. This reaction only occurred, as far as she could tell, if the subject was intensely stressed or agitated—or if they hadn't fed recently.

"Do you know how long Amelie and I have been friends?" Myrnin asked Claire, looking her directly in the eyes. He didn't give her a chance to answer, just continued talking. "We met a little over nine hundred years ago, shortly after my apprenticeship to Gwion had ended—or, rather, had been cut short by Mr Bishop's involvement." He smiled a cold, sad smile, one Claire had only seen once before. "We have all lost someone special to Amelie's dear father, you know."

Wondering if this was just a different way for Myrnin to distract her from her original question, Claire cleared her throat. "Whilst this is fascinating stuff, how is this relevant to your activities in the library?"

Myrnin laughed, a short, harsh laugh which contrasted his usual personality absolutely. To Claire, he was scarcely the same man she knew—something she shouldn't be surprised at. After all, she had always known he had many faces; she just hadn't seen most of them. "My dear, my relationship with Amelie is central to the library. Though please do not say 'activities in the library' again; it makes a perfectly harmless experiment sound really rather seedy."

Claire ran a hand through her hair, fluttering her fingers to allow the few loose strands of hair fall to the floor. She ignored the look of disapproval on Myrnin's face; he couldn't exactly lecture her on keeping the lab tidy, considering how old some of the beakers on the tables were. "Alright then, shoot: how is your relationship with Amelie key to your…work?"

There was almost a minute's pause as Myrnin took a seat by one of the tables, his eyes focused on Bob in his tank on the table just across from him. Only when the spider had completed its move around the four walls of the tank did Myrnin continue.

"Since the beginning, Amelie and I have had a close relationship—we were once more, until we recognised our strengths were better utilised as friends than lovers. Our tastes were completely different, too, that was another factor in ending the relationship—"

"I don't need to know about your love life; it's really something that seems irrelevant."

Myrnin blushed, something Claire couldn't remember seeing him do before. Until recently, she didn't even know vampires _could_ blush.

"We spent a lot of time in very close proximity, and it became clear to one another that we were what you would consider a _best friend_: nothing was too great an ask for the other. Whatever Amelie desired, I did. Whatever I desired, Amelie did.

"She did a great deal for me in those early years, before Oliver came along to interrupt our lives, our steady equilibrium. She even assassinated a French king for me, you know, to ensure that my cover as a brilliant new physician remained intact.

"We could recognise when the other needed something doing without having to be told. I told Amelie repeatedly about Oliver, and yet she refused to listen, so I forced his hand—I proved to her that his loyalty was questionable, before becoming nonexistent…just as she banished me from the continent when it became clear that my problems there were irresolvable. She could have kept me alive, but she knew that a life locked away in her castle was not something I desired to return to—anyway, the point is that throughout our lives, we have done anything and everything for one another.

"I would kill for her. Just as she would—and has—killed for me, has destroyed entire civilisations to ensure our mutual survival."

Claire shivered. She supposed it was a natural reaction to understanding a little more of the carnage and bloodshed which littered—perhaps formed the entire framework of—the back stories of Myrnin and Amelie. Whilst she had always been distantly aware that Myrnin's past was bloody, and contained horrors with details best kept quiet, it was different hearing about it in such a casual manner. He made it sound as though if Amelie wanted Claire dead, he wouldn't hesitate to kill her—and that was pretty scary, if Claire was honest. There was a difference between Myrnin wanting to kill her because of his illness and Myrnin killing her because it was what his friend wanted.

"So it _is_ something for Amelie?" Claire confirmed, taking the opportunity to turn away from Myrnin as she reached back for her seat. She didn't want him to see just how deeply his words had affected her. She had always known that if Amelie wanted her dead, she would be dead…it was just a little strange hearing just how deep Myrnin's loyalties to Amelie ran.

Rolling his eyes, her boss nodded his head, the movement causing his curls to swing erratically around his face. He spat a mouthful of hair out, making a disgusted face. "I really ought to purchase some of those things you use for your hair—did you say you called them boddles?"

"_Bobbles_, Myrnin."

"There's not much difference between boddles and bobbles; I think boddles sounds better, anyway."

A period of silence fell once again as Claire tried to straighten out her thoughts to come up with a way to get to find out just what Myrnin was doing—it was obvious he wasn't going to directly answer 'what are you doing?' He didn't seem particularly forthcoming in providing information, perfectly content to sit there in silence, which in itself was indicative of strange behaviour: Myrnin _never_ sat down if he had other projects to be dealing with.

"So…what you're doing for Amelie…is it something she's asked you to do, or is it something you've deduced she wants?" Claire asked, picking up a pen from the worktop as she spoke. Without consciously realising, she began to take the lid on and off, creating a sound almost identical to the clicking of a clicker pen.

"Please stop making that racket, it is making my brain go around in circles," Myrnin said, referring to the pen. "I have deduced that she wants this—not that much deduction was required. It is relatively obvious what she wants."

A sinking feeling made itself known in Claire's stomach as she processed Myrnin's words, hoping desperately that what she thought Amelie wanted wasn't what Myrnin was attempting. "You can't mean…"

Myrnin sighed, standing up and kicking the stool over as he strode towards Claire. It was almost disconcerting to see him approach so quickly, and even more so for him to bend down to stare directly into Claire's eyes.

"Of course I mean that, little Claire—but you knew what I am doing as soon as I started telling you about Amelie, didn't you?" he murmured. Gently, he rested one hand upon her shoulder as Claire felt a burning sensation rise up from her stomach into her throat. "I did desire to keep this from you for a reason; I know it must horrify you. If truth be told, if it was anyone but Amelie who desired this, well, I would not be attempting it. Yet Amelie is my confidant, my closest ally in this evil world: I _must_ give her what makes her happy."

"I'm going to be sick," Claire muttered, pushing Myrnin's hand from her shoulder as she strode away from him towards the little toilet in the back of the lab. As she ran, she tried not to think of the way _he_ had laid upon the stage, upon the silk cushion in the church; she tried not to think of how she had watched as he was lowered into the ground, the only vampire in a graveyard full of humans.

But it was no good. All she could see was shadows and dark versions of the man they had once known, the one who saved them all without asking anything of them.

All she could think of was what price Myrnin was willing to pay to bring back Sam Glass from the dead.

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